This invention relates to data processing and, more particularly, to a data processing system of the general type comprising first selection means for selecting a plurality of characters of a first set, second selection means for selecting a plurality of characters of a second set, display means for displaying the selected characters of the first and second sets, and control means responsive to the first and second selection means for controlling said display means to display the selected characters of said first set in a first display area and the selected characters of said second set in a second display area.
An example of the above-type of data processing system used to process Japanese language text is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,119 filed on Mar. 25, 1977 in the names of Shingo Arase and Roy J. Lahr for Apparatus for Assisting in the Transposition of Foreign Language Test and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. As described in that system, a display is divided into two discrete display areas. A first display area is used to display a portion of the Japanese text being created and which may be composed of Hiragana, Katakana, Romaji and Kanji characters. The second display area is used to display Kanji characters having a sound similarity to a phonetic Japanese character or characters (e.g. Hiragana or Katakana) just selected and made to appear in the first text display area. A desired one or more Kanji characters may then be selected for substitution into the text display area in place of the similarly sounding Japanese phonetic character or characters that last appeared in the text.
It would be desirable to provide a data processing system of the general type described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,119, where the concept of providing multiple display areas could be expanded to display in a first display area the complete page of text being created to thereby enable page formatting and the like, and in addition to display in a second display area a magnified portion of the page of text being created to thereby facilitate editing and verification of the text. It would also be desirable to provide a third display area for Kanji selection, as is done in the second display area of the system of U.S. application Ser. No. 781,266. It would further be desirable if the second display area for magnified viewing could be made adjustable in terms of its dimensions.